Hibiscus's wings buzzed softly as she hovered in place, hands planted firmly on her hips, looking down at the experiment table.
"So explain to me what you're trying to do again, Tahlea, and more importantly, why it has to smell so bad?" The fairy pinched her nose.
Tahlea Grande was definitely the weirdest friend that Hibi had. But if a little thing like Tahlea volunteering to let an alchemist take her spirit out of her body and use it as the core of a human-sized homunculus, giving Tahlea a new existence as an entirely different type of being, rooted in the magic of Alchemy rather than Glamour, without even her memories of her past life, would have been enough to break up that friendship, well, then they wouldn't have been friends in the first place.
Frankly, Hibi considered that to be the most quintessentially Tahlea thing the fairy-turned-homunculus had ever done.
"I'm trying to design an experiment for Father's first-year apprentices to replicate, something that would require an advanced use of the Engrave Rune, before he lets them move on to creating golems."
"Shouldn't he get someone who can actually use Runes to do that?" As a homunculus, Tahlea could no more use human magic than she could have when she'd been a fairy.
"That's not actually a concern with a project like this. Remember, Alchemy Runes are just shortcuts for existing experimental principles, with the Rune converting the mana provided by its user into the precise alignment of magical energy as would be created by the mixture of reagents. All I need to do is to design an alchemical reaction that can be duplicated with the manipulations of the Engrave Rune."
Hibiscus blinked at her.
"Every so often, I need these little reminders that you actually know what you're doing with this stuff."
"Thanks! Though…" Tahlea scowled down at the bubbling beaker of pale blue fluid. "I don't think that this is supposed to look like I was making soup out of a ghost." She glanced over the spines of the books lined up on the shelf over the table. "And I didn't bring in Gramayre's Spiritual Artifice. Could you go get it for me? I need to look something up."
Since the alternative was to stay with the unstable chemicals while Tahlea went for the book, Hibi said, "Sure. Where is it?"
"It should be in the reference library next door, on the second set of shelves. It's bound in red leather with copper fittings."
"Okay, fine."
Hibi flitted off to the next room.
"Um, Tahlea," she called back a minute later, "I don't see that book of yours anywhere on this shelf."
"You don't? Oh, that must be why I didn't grab it when I started this." Hibi came back just in time to see Tahlea staring off blankly into space for a second before blushing as her eyes refocused. "Um…I left it on my bedside table last night and forgot to bring it down."
"You're sure?"
"Uh-huh. I just looked, to make certain."
"All right; I'll go up and get it."
She'd just gotten out the door when the loud thump and the shattering of glass from behind her told Hibi that her errand had lost its urgency. She turned back to see a bright blue haze swirling through the laboratory, out of which Tahlea staggered, coughing.
"Tahlea, are you all right?" Hibi yelped.
"Uh-huh. The gloves and apron kept me from getting cut by the glass." Her hair was a disarranged mess and her face soot-stained, but those were nothing new, though the blue color of the stains was a little less common.
"That's good. But still, you've got to be more careful! I don't know how somebody who has a psychic power to see things three floors away can't notice an explosion about to happen right in front of her!"